Dear LQ Community,

I've got an HP dv1622nr laptop (essentially series dv1000) on which I'm testing a WUBI installation of Feisty Fawn after trying out the live 7.04 CD. It seems to see pretty much everything such as sound, video, ethernet, and wireless out of the box, but not my winmodem (of course - that would be too easy!!)

Unfortunately, I've got to have a working dialup connection and there is no serial port on the system.

After visiting Linmodem and reading various wiki & howto articles (thanks to all contributors), I dl'd the appropriate (I hope) driver and installed it. Now, my Smartlink at /dev/ttySL0 responds to query modem requests in Gnome ppp as well as terminal probes from within Kppp. In fact, I was able to use the INIT2 information found through Gnome to help configure the Kppp dialer which is what I want to use.

Howsomever, the Kppp log showed that while modem initialization apparently went without a hitch up to dialing the ISP's telephone number, the process stalled after that and failed with a NO CARRIER message. After poking about a bit, I found a thread at Ubuntu forums to try:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/sl-modem-daemon restart

This got rid of the NO CARRIER problem (Note: the daemon restart is required whenever the system is rebooted), but then I started getting NO ANSWER in the log although I knew I was dialing the correct number.

I verified that the modem was dialing out under WINDOWS by picking up a handset and listening for tones, but when I returned to Ubuntu kppp I discovered that although the log said the modem was dialing out, there were no tones.

On another Ubuntu thread dealing with SmartLink winmodems, I found a reference to a driver set and a comment, “This package seems to work better in breezy and dapper and does not give the dialing problem that causes the modem to fail on ATDT and not dial out."

On a hunch, I tried the latest KANOTIX Live CD which recognized a modem at /dev/ttySL0, but had the same NO ANSWER problem. Although both Ubuntu and KANOTIX are debian based, I'm sure the issue is with the SmartLink driver rather than a given distro.

Does anyone out there have any particular experience with the SmartLink drivers for winmodems and any suggestions as which version is most likely to work given the known ATDT question? If all else fails, my system has both a PCMCIA port and USB ports which could support an external modem if it supports LINUX.

Any thoughts or suggestions appreciated.

This may be a dirty word for you but you may try Suse 10.2 dvd. They have Smart Link modem drivers on their source dvd just to see if it is the drivers or not. You may have a newer version of "Smart Link" modem that there isn't a good driver for yet.

Dear Larry,

Thanks for your thoughts; SUSE isn't a dirty word with me. I may try their Live CD approach which I think is actually about 2 cd's, but the problem may indeed be a tweaked chipset that has no good driver yet.

You said you were at linmodems, did you use the scanModem tool to produce recommendations for the driver kit?. It will also give a link to linmodems maintainers with allot of experience who can walk you through things if you can't get it to work with the information the scanModem tool provides. All you do is send in the modemdata.txt file to them and tell them what steps you took and at what stage you're at etc. The scanModem tool also produces tons of useful information including how to test the module installation.
Below is the generic init2 string I use which is identical to the one wvdial uses for comparison to the one you use from Gnome-ppp.
Many distributions use a /etc/wvdial.conf file which contains necessary dial-out information even if wvdial is not installed. If you have this file, you can try adding a couple lines individually to see if it makes a difference. One/two of the two lines below are sometimes needed in the wvdial.conf file for a successful dial-out, won't hurt to try them if you have /etc/wvdial.conf.

What kernel version are you using? With 2.6.21.x and earlier I've had good results with slmodem-2.9.11-20061021. It's a source package that has to be built but it's worked for my usb modem. I haven't found a more recent version, though, but I've been looking since upgrading to kernel 2.6.22.

Thanks to all thus far, but there's a new twist.

Because I couldn't be sure that I hadn't inadvertently done somethng screwy, I wiped and then reinstalled 7.04 through WUBI including the standard security updates at a local WiFi point. I then downloaded the scanModem.gz and went through the process of rerunning it before I did anything else to my system relative to dialers or dialout configurations which.

The Modemtxt now says I have a Conexant chipset although I thought that I got SmartLink information the first time, but my earlier playing about may have messed something up. I still find this odd because at least 2 other LiveCD distros (KANOTIX and MEPIS) found and set up SmartLink winmodems at ttySL0 as I'd earlier reported although both with the missing dialout tones issue.

I will keep eveyone's advice at hand, but think I'll have to look at the possibility that I have a Conexant chipset and try to figure out those drivers with their known issues as my next step.

Also, I recently had a client suggest that I consider a type of dialup router that does the dialup, but attaches to your laptop or other system with 10/100 cable through an RJ45 port. I'd be interested in hearing if anyone has experience with such a setup.

The Conexant modem is one of the easiest to install drivers for, go here and click on the drivers download link on the left for the type of modem the modemdata.txt says it is, probably HSF, you'll also notice links for "installation" which will give instructions on howto. Scroll your way to SUSE pre-built binaries matching your current running kernel by accepting the agreement and click on "driver download page".
Once you have it, all you have to do is un-zip it to separate the driver and the licence and then install with rpm install command. If you have a weird kernel that they don't have a pre-built binary for, there is a source .rpm package that is installed the same way providing you have the kernel-source necessary for module building installed.
If scanModem says it's a Conexant, it more than likely is, especially if you've never got the smartlink source to work. You'll only get 1.4kbps speed till you give them $20.00 or so. I have access to faster wireless networks all over the place with my laptop which has a Conexant, so I'm OK with the slower speed because it's rare I use my laptop to download something at home, if I absolutely need to use the laptop instead of the desktop, I boot Windows which has full speed with that modem. Once you buy the licence to get full speed, you can use it with as many different Linux distributions providing you use the same modem and mother board.

One thing you might look at is the vendorroduct id number for the modem. Open a terminal windows and type /sbin/lspci and look for the line that describes the communications device. On the left is the hexadecimal vendorroduct number followed by the description. You can use this or ScanModem to see if the different distros are detecting the same device.

My laptop, a 6 yr old HP ze4315 also has a winmodem, which is a Conexant, and uses the linuxant driver. Before I knew about Linuxant I'd gotten my usb SmartLink modem, which indicated on the box that it works with Linux.

First, thanks to everyone for their help and suggestions with my winmodem. I've been able to get it going and here's what happened to get there.


I don't know what I'd done prior to reinstalling Ubuntu 7.04 through WUBI, but I either misread the first scanModem output or had done something to my laptop that confused the issue and resulted in my thinking I had a SmartLink modem. After reinstalling, I ran scanModem prior to installing any dialers or making any adjustments to wvdial.conf This resulted in my chipset being identified as Conexant. Specifically (from the ModemData.txt file generated by scanModem):
*************************************************************

CodecModemFile not found
For candidate modem in PCI bus: 00:1e.3
Class 0703: 8086:266d Modem: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW
Primary PCI_id 8086:266d
Subsystem PCI_id 103c:3080
Softmodem codec or Vendor from diagnostics: CXT30, a Conexant type,
from Archives: CXT, a Conexant type,
CXT is a generic for all CXTnumbers, with Linuxant hsfmodem software support.

Lacking a dsp (digital signal processing) chip, the modem is a software
intensive or "softmodem" type. Its primary controller manages the traffic
with the CPU. But the software needed is specified in the Subsystem.
-----------------------------------------
Support type needed or chipset: hsfmodem

*************************************************************
Further in the ModemData.txt file:
*************************************************************

The hsfmodem package serves a great variety of Conexant chipset modems.
From http://www.linuxant.com/drivers/hsf/...ubuntu-x86.php
download hsfmodem_VersionSpec_k2.6.20_16_generic_ubuntu_i386.deb.zip
with 2.6.20_16_generic equivalent to 2.6.20-16-generic, your kernel version.
*************************************************************

I went to the Linuxant web site and followed the drivers link to the HSF section and used their web install setup for the ubuntu_i386 driver. I had trouble getting this process to work in my browser, but used the terminal option that was offered without a problem. I then modified the /etc/wvdial.conf file using the wvdial.txt generated by scanModem as a reference; thence to a terminal $ sudo wvdial and I had tone and a working data connection albeit at 14.4 Kbps which is the max the freeware driver will run. The full 56K data/fax driver costs $20 USD. Personally, that doesn't seem like too much given the legal issues Linuxant has to handle and the fact that the hardware solutions I'd seen as possibles were running at least twice that much, but I'll be waiting a bit before forking over the cash.


Also during my searching, I'd found a note indicating that some Conexant chipsets can use the Smartlink driver which may be why the other distros identified the modem as SmartLink at /dev/ttySL0. That might also explain the apparent ability of the modem to respond to modem queries, but subsequent failure to generate dialout tones when issued an ATDT command. I may experiment with the SmartLink driver in the future to see if it's just a matter of the right init strings. If I find the workaround is that simple, I'll be sure to pass along the information.

Thanks again to all.